On Tuesday night, just after 11:00 P.M., three masked men broke into a house in the town of Pardes Hanna-Karkur. One of the occupants of the house, a man in his 50s, was awakened by his wife’s screams. He came out to see what was happening and found the intruders in his living room. As they fled, he began chasing them until one of them turned back and shot him. His wife immediately called the police and emergency services.

Daniel Marcus, a high-tech worker and United Hatzalah volunteer paramedic, was alerted to the incident by his communications device while sleeping. He quickly got dressed and rushed to his car. Racing to the scene of the emergency, the paramedic arrived within less than two minutes. After making sure that the shooting had stopped and the threat had passed, Daniel ran to the entrance of the house together with an EMT who had arrived at the same time.

The pair carried out a quick vitals check of the victim. The patient was pale, sweating, and had impaired consciousness, having suffered a gunshot wound on the upper left-hand side of his abdomen. Together with the EMT, Daniel bandaged the wound, putting pressure on it in order to stop the bleeding, and proceeded to open an IV line. When the intensive care ambulance arrived at the scene a few minutes later, Daniel briefed the ambulance and assisted in the immediate evacuation of the patient to the hospital.

Daniel, reflected on the incident the next morning and said: “Our ability as United Hatzalah volunteers to arrive quickly at the scene of an emergency is what makes a difference, especially in the case of severe trauma, such as this, when the time between the injury and the surgery is critical. In this region, there are very few ALS (advanced life support) medics. When a patient can be seen by a paramedic two minutes after the incident, it makes a huge difference. Sometimes, saving someone’s life is taking the decision not to insist on treating them in the field but rather to provide them basic initial treatment at the scene to stop the bleeding and then transport the injured as soon as possible to the hospital.”

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